The Bliss of Mrs Blossom

Description

I picked up this fabric from Fabric-a-brac (blogged here) and I knew it had to become a dress! The fabric is good enough that I could have even made a jacket – but alas there was only 2 meters!

It has the biggest purple and pink blossoms and another fleur de lis (?) kinda print – I’m not sure what this might be called – let me know in the comments if you do!
The fabric could well have been a curtain off cut so it’s pretty warm and so I’m able to wear it around without a cardigan.

The pattern I used was Simplicity 7436. An a-line tent dress with V shaped yoke and front patch pockets. The V at the front is supposed to be created in 3 parts – but I wanted to make it in 2 pieces so that the pattern was continuous. It worked out but the point of the V went a little funny and so I ended up with a teeny little pleat to make it look ok

Matching the print at the seam lines was a bit tricky.

I also added long sleeves from another pattern as this one is obviously for summer as it only includes short ones

These photos were taken at the Blog Society Launch on the top of the Sydney Museum of Contemporary Art by Annette Wilson – who is an actual photographer but was kind enough to take these pics for me.

1 Reply

not a silly question at all! Most patterns will have the year published on the back of the pattern in small writing. If is isn’t printed, you can always search the pattern number and brand (ie Simplicity 1234) in pattern review http://sewing.patternreview.com/ or vintage patterns wiki http://vintagepatterns.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page where they list a lot of patterns. The next step if it isn’t there is to try good old Google to see if anyone has written about it before.

And if all these fail, you can post a picture to Burdastyle or Sew Retro and ask for other users opinions on the style and date.

One giveaway for 60s patterns is the length of the hem and the sleeve type. if you can see the knees on model in the picture or if the dress has large bishop/angel sleeve type these are very 60s in style. Also if it looks like clothing that a child might wear – but for adults, that is also a tell tale sign of 60s fashion.

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